2013 - Reprints: Marketing

Figurative language in advertising affects product attitudes positively across contexts. In contrast, the present research demonstrates that the use and effectiveness of figurative language in consumer-generated content is context specific, because of conversational norms unique to this form of communication. Study 1 shows that consumer reviews containing more figurative language lead to more favorable attitudes in hedonic, but not utilitarian, consumption contexts, and that conversational norms about figurative language govern this effect. Study 2 reveals that reading a review containing figurative language increases choice of hedonic over utilitarian options. Finally, via analysis of online consumer reviews and a lab experiment, studies 3 and 4 indicate that consumers use figurative language more when sharing experiences about hedonic than utilitarian consumption, and that review extremity influences figurative language use only in reviews of hedonic consumption. The studies highlight the critical role of conversational norms in interpreting and creating user-generated content.

The allostatic theory of drug abuse describes the brain’s reward system alterations as sub-stance misuse progresses. Neural adaptations arising from the reward system itself and from the antireward system provide the subject with functional stability, while affecting the person’s mood.We propose a computational hypothesis describing how a virtual subject’s drug consumption, cognitive substrate, and mood interface with reward and antireward systems. Reward system adaptations are assumed interrelated with the ongoing neural activity defining behavior toward drug intake, including activity in the nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, and prefrontal cortex (PFC). Antireward system adaptations are assumed to mutually connect with higher-order cognitive processes occurring within PFC, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex.The subject’s mood estimation is a provisional function of reward components. The presented knowledge repository model incorporates pharma-cokinetic, pharmacodynamic, neuropsychological, cognitive, and behavioral components. Patterns of tobacco smoking exemplify the framework’s predictive properties: escalation of cigarette consumption, conventional treatments similar to nicotine patches, and alternative medical practices comparable to meditation.The primary outcomes include an estimate of the virtual subject’s mood and the daily account of drug intakes.The main limitation of this study resides in the 21 time-dependent processes which partially describe the complex phenomena of drug addiction and involve a large number of parameters which may under-constrain the framework. Our model predicts that reward system adaptations account for mood stabilization, whereas antireward system adaptations delineate mood improvement and reduction in drug consumption. This investigation provides formal arguments encouraging current rehabilitation therapies to include meditation-like practices along with pharmaceutical drugs and behavioral counseling.

In this article, we propose a new product positioning method based on the neural network methodology of a self-organizing map. The method incorporates the concept of rings of influence, where a firm evaluates individual consumers and decides on the intensity to pursue a consumer, based on the probability that this consumer will purchase a competing product. The method has several advantages over earlier work. First, no limitations are imposed on the number of competing products and second, the method can position multiple products in multiple market segments. Using simulations, we compare the new product positioning method with a quasi-Newton method and find that the new method always approaches the best solution obtained by the quasi-Newton method. The quasi-Newton method, however, is dependent on the initial positions of the new products, with the majority of cases ending in a local optimum. Furthermore, the computational time required by the quasi-Newton method increases exponentially, while the time required by the new method is small and remains almost unchanged, when the number of new products positioned increases. We also compute the expected utility that a firm will provide consumers by offering its products. We show that as the intensity with which a firm pursues consumers increases, the new method results in near optimal solutions in terms of market share, but with higher expected utility provided to consumers when compared to that obtained by a quasi-Newton method. Thus, the new method can serve as a managerial decision-making tool to compare the short-term market share objective with the long-term expected utility that a firm will provide to consumers, when it positions its products and intensifies its effort to attract consumers away from competition.